Wavii: A Facebook for Topics

Short bursts of news on everything . . .

Facebook has transformed how we keep tabs on friends, by training people to constantly publish short status updates about the delicious meal they just ate or the killer vacation they just took. A site called Waviiopened to the public earlier this week that wants to do the same thing for topics, with short bursts of news on everything from corporate acquisitions to celebrities.

Sure, Facebook gives people some ability to follow topics. Your friends post links to news articles that alert you to events like Whitney Houston’s death or the outcome of a Republican primary. There are Facebook fan pages for bands that tell you when they are touring and releasing a new album. But it’s hard to rely on either for a comprehensive view of topics — an interesting story may escape the attention of Facebook friends, and the band you are following may choose not to post links to unflattering news or reviews about them on their fan page.

“Facebook did really nail staying on top of your friends,” said Adrian Aoun, the chief executive and founder of Wavii. “No one has done that for staying on top of topics.”

Wavii, based in Seattle, works by scouring the Web, including news sites, Twitter and blogs, for news about a vast number of topics. It then automatically creates the equivalent of a status update on the topic that summarizes the news, often in just one sentence, with a link to the full story on the site from which the news originated. Wavii users see a Facebook-like feed with updates on all the news topics they follow.